Calligraphy
by ItalicsInIndigo
Summary: Like skill with a calligraphy brush, love develops over time. Edited and shiny! Fluffy oneshot with mild YxK


**A/N Finally back up again. It's edited and polished and I've added some new content. To everyone who reviewed before, I'm sorry I deleted your comments. Thank you, though. I really think the story is better now :)**

* * *

**Calligraphy**

His carefully held stock of memories – greater than one would expect from the youthful face – was full of frustration and pain. There were some memories he'd like to forget, but Keiki would never let himself, not in the weakest of moments. They were part of who he was, now. When one is so very sensitive to death, every heartbeat is sacred and tenderly cared for.

Still, amongst the collection, a trend had begun to grow over the last few years. Slowly, but undeniably, the darker ones were being outweighed by the new, unfamiliar sense of happiness. Standing on the terrace, looking out at the sun-drenched Imperial Gardens, he couldn't help but remember and grieve.

* * *

"Um...What does this mean, again?"

"That is the character for 'surplus'."

"And...this one here...does that mean 'province?"

"No. 'Prefecture'."

"Ah- a prefecture is the region between the bounds of a District and a County, right?"

"That is correct."

A sigh, and the eyes look down at the scroll through thick, dark lashes.

"There are so many, sometimes I think I'll never learn them all."

"You will."

One of her funny little smiles upward. "I'm glad I have you. I can't even read without you. Thanks."

"I am your servant," he says, and moves in a little closer. He leans in over her elbow to reach for another scroll, and side by side, they read it together.

* * *

A small chuckle brought him out of his reminiscing. Keiki shook his head slightly and watched his other half reclining beneath a spreading tree, smiling at the volume she held in her lap.

After many years of study (in so many areas) she had finally found herself fluent in the characters they used Over Here. With her newfound literacy, she'd been tirelessly working her way through the palace libraries. Sometimes he came to wake her up in the mornings and found her asleep in her chair, a book for a pillow and a burned-out candle at her elbow. Strangely, she had never seemed to fall asleep whilst he was still reading for her.

He was happy for her in her obvious delight. But still…

He closed his eyes.

* * *

A knock on the door, and he knows who it is before it opens. This child-woman, beginning to grow into her silks and ornaments, but still so painfully unsure of herself. As slender and as wavering as the note of a reed flute.

"Do you have a minute?" she asks, looking hopeful and a little awkward. He casually lays aside the document he has been annotating, as if it isn't the vital treasury report outlying the kingdom's budget for the next year. He nudges it out of sight behind a stack of reports.

"I have no pressing concerns. What is the matter?"

She lays a heap of her own paperwork down on his desk, impatiently shaking her trailing sleeves out of the way. "I'm having trouble with these. I've tried going through them, but they're so full of technical jargon that I just don't understand."

He sighs, but only softly, so as not to put her off.

"Are you sure you're not too busy? I know you have a ton of work to do with Ei Province alone. I could ask Enho-"

He quickly picks up the topmost report and scans it. In his usual emotionless voice he replies, "Enho is a very busy and hardworking man. It would hardly show your respect and gratitude to him if you disturbed him at this hour of the evening. I will assist you as best I can."

"Thanks, Keiki." The warmth in her voice makes it hard to hide the budding smile, but he does it, as usual.

He moves over a pile of figures from the city repair committees, so she will have to sit on his left-hand side, and as she is right-handed, she will have to lean in, just a little. She sits down and he catches a drift of her scent, the fresh, bright smell of her skin mixed with the perfume of the white flowers in her hair.

She spreads out the scroll in her hand, smoothing out the ends with carved jade paperweights. "See, this character? I don't recognise it."

"It means 'abundance'."

"Oh."

"You should try writing it. You'll learn much more quickly if you practise your calligraphy often."

"I know, Keiki. I am trying."

"I know you are," he says, a little more kindly. When she takes the brush, he slides her fingers further up the grip.

"You should hold it here. It allows for greater movement. And lift your wrist up. An Empress does not write with her wrist on the table."

Her brush strokes are strange. Used to finer instruments, her lines are too thick and unsteady, and she presses down on the fibres in a way that smudges the ink and leaves splashes all over her scraps of paper. Yet there is something in her characters that recalls many years of writing in a similar style. Not a novice, not an adept, this child-woman student of his. But he couldn't ask for a better or more dedicated pupil.

He makes a mental note to buy her a set of the fine jade-handled brushes with gold tracery, like the fashionable court ladies use. Maybe they will suit her way of writing better than the bigger styluses used by the ministers. More fluid, softer, yet forcing a little extra hardness from the writer.

His own brushes are too inflexible for her. They're for a master, made for small, neat characters, regimented in columns. The makers had to use the hairs from a wolf that had died of old age. Anything else would hurt him as though he formed the characters with his own blood.

"There. How's that?"

He peers over her shoulder. "A good attempt, but look – these strokes have been drawn too close together and the ink surplus on the brush has smeared them into one. Remember to press the brush onto the inkstone, like so... it will absorb the ink and form the correct point for writing."

He plucks the brush from her fingers and pours a little water onto the stone from the well; a piece of solid quartz, the impurities glowing in the candlelight. The flame flickers behind its small screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl, subtly changing the colours of their hair.

"You'll learn to judge exactly how much ink you'll need," he says, choosing a fresh ink stick from a small wooden box. The top is ornamented with a intricate design of golden cranes.

"I always feel bad using those ink sticks. They're too pretty to destroy."

"That is the way of life. All things must change. Beautiful things go, but they must in order to make room for something better. A calligrapher understands this."

He deftly mixes the ink and presses it into the brush, writing the character in a few graceful swoops. Their efforts look up at him, side by side. His; prim, neat and refined, hers; shaky, unsure, but tinged with a certain air of determination. He lays the brush down with a faint click against the porcelain rest.

She looks at his character and hers, and smiles crookedly.

"We're an odd team," she says quietly, "but let's keep working together, Keiki, you and I. I think that everything will be fine if we're together." She clears her throat and points to the next column over. "Now, this one I know means either 'wage' or 'taxes'..."

* * *

"Your Majesty. A letter from Han-Ou."

She frowns as she struggles with the dense syntax. He makes no comment until she hands it over with a sigh.

"I'm sorry, Keiki. But his letters are always so flowery and complicated. I can understand most of En-Ou's letters now, but Han-Ou's just continue to evade me."

"It is understandable."

"Would you?"

"To the Exalted Empress Sekishi of Kei, in the eleventh month of the fifth year of Sekiraku, may she live forever. Though the red leaves of the maple are now fallen, may your heart be as pure and as untroubled as the freshly born snow…"

She stares into the middle distance. In utter concentration, her face is serious.

His voice is steady.

* * *

They are alone in the _Sekisui-dan_, part of her Inner Palace library, and where she spends so much of her time nowadays. In the marble quiet, the unread words seem to whisper their erudition. The air is dense with potential of undiscovered wonders.

She runs a finger along a shelf of scrolls. Tags flutter from the ends, signifying the contents.

"So much knowledge. I wish I knew what these said."

"I could read them to you."

She looks at him with a small smile. "What, all of them? There must be thousands."

"If you asked it of me, then I would do it."

She looks up. "What is stored in this section? I've been sat here every day for the past few years, and I've never yet found out. It makes me feel guilty. I'm surrounded by genius and wisdom and wholly ignorant to it all. What would the masters make of me?"

"They would praise a diligent student. This wall of shelves is given over to fiction."

She turns, surprised. "You have fiction Over Here?"

"Of course. In times past, Kei was known for the quality of her artisans, especially her poets and writers. Why do you sigh?"

"I used to love reading in Hourai. I spent so much of my money on books. I miss being able to just pick one up and lose myself in it for an hour or two. If I want to be told a story here, it turns into a big production and everyone is inconvenienced. It's one of the most annoying side-effects of being non self-sufficient."

He reaches over her head to withdraw a scroll from the honeycomb.

"What are you doing?"

"You should be introduced to the Saga of New Dawning. An account of the rebirth of the world, told in ballad form. It's a classic taught in every school in the Twelve Kingdoms. Widely renowned for its beauty and adventure."

"But-"

"We have the time. Sit down, Shu-jou, and let me read to you."

* * *

They moved on to poetry and literature eventually, once the kingdom's internal workings had quieted down a little, and she'd thought to inquire after the other books and scrolls in her library. They'd spent many evenings on her terrace by the mossy waterfall, or in her rooms before a crackling fire while he read aloud in his gentle voice and she listened, eyes half-closed in pleasure, smiling slightly at the way he couldn't help a little feeling from tiptoeing into his tone as he read those lovely and immortal words.

Ten years later, ten years of sitting side by side, sharing a pot of tea and who knew how many evenings of their long, patient lives; his hand guiding hers in the formation of their words, and it has come, at long last, to this. She doesn't need him anymore. There will be no more comfortable nights spent in quiet companionship. No tap at the door, or the faint frown of concentration as she runs one fingertip along the lines of symbols, mouthing the words as she goes along.

* * *

Half-hidden behind a pillar, he watched her read effortlessly, caught up in some story that he had no place in. Here, but not really _here_. His chest hurt at the thought of being lonely. He hadn't felt that way for quite some time.

"Keiki?"

He looked up, startled.

"I see you skulking over there. What's the matter?"

"Nothing." He replied, smoothing his face into neutrality and walking towards her, blades of grass tickling the tops of his feet.

"May I sit?"

She answered him by seizing a handful of his sleeve and pulling him down beside her. The shade of the tree was welcome on his face. Her skin looked darker in its shadow, her eyes like unpolished semiprecious stones.

"What are you reading?"

She kept her place with one finger and showed him the name on the cover. It was an epic ballad of a tragic romance, written by a poet whose real name had been lost with time, and was now known simply as 'The King of Minstrels'. It was one of their old favorites. He always found his voice softening when he read it, occasionally unable to restrain a blush at the lovers' confessions of their ill-fated ardour.

"You're reading the Moonshadow Elegies again?"

"It's such a beautiful story. You can't tell me it's not the most beautiful thing you've ever come across."

"I don't know about that."

She frowned suddenly. "The author's name isn't on the cover."

"Well, no. We don't know what the poet's true name was."

"But I've heard it aloud."

"That's just a nickname," he told her gently. "We don't use it formally because it's not real."

"But how do you write it?" she asked, looking into his face.

He felt a strange sensation course through him, disrupted quickly by his disappointment. "There are characters, certainly, but we have no ink or paper. I'll write them for you later."

She was interested indeed, or perhaps she saw the faint flicker in his eyes.

"Here." She offered him her hand. He stared at it blankly until she sighed in quiet amusement and tipped her upturned palm towards him. "Write the characters on my hand. I'll remember them."

"Shu-jou..."

"Please, Keiki."

He looked at her for a second, then took her hand in his own. It was a very small hand to hold the weight of an entire country. In a rush of compassion for her, he bent over her hand, his mane falling in pale swirls over her bare forearm. He carefully drew the name of that lauded and lovelorn poet upon her browned and warm skin. She was smiling bright-eyed at him when he looked up again.

"Thank you," she said, her hand still in his.

He felt his composure slip just a little.

"You're welcome. It is my pleasure to teach you," he continued in lighter a tone than he really meant, "not that there is much that remains for me to teach."

"Keiki...I'll always need you. You know that. _Baka_ kirin!"

"Shu-jou..."

"And even if you were running out of things to teach me, which I sincerely doubt... there's plenty of stuff that_ I_ can teach _you_."

His eyes opened in surprise. "Shu-jou..."

"I know. It doesn't seem like there's much this useless Empress can teach you! But..." She took his hand and turned it over, interlocking his fingers with her own. With her other hand she lightly traced feathery brushstrokes onto his skin. He shivered slightly and looked down at her bowed head, dappled with patchy sunlight into bursts of most vivid scarlet and crimson.

Her skin on his was simultaneously soft from her beauty creams and rough from the callus-patches from her sword training. She finished her tender calligraphy and looked up at him with a certain mischievous glint in her eyes that he knew well.

"Shu-jou?"

"That's the writing we use in Hourai," she told him. "That's how I write my name. Nakajima Youko."

He looked down at their joined hands, speechless.

"Well? Let me see if you've learned it," she said impishly, turning her palm upwards. He closed his hand on the gift she had indelibly etched there, glowing imperceptibly, and repeated the last few strokes on her hand, his calligraphy rough and shaky, his large fingers clumsy on her delicate, battle-scarred palm.

He finished the last stroke. "Youko," he repeated quietly, and looked up at her.

She smiled almost shyly at him, then planted something heavy in his lap. He looked down dizzily and saw their book.

"Will you read it to me?"

"But...you read perfectly on your own now. You don't need me to read it to you."

"Yes, but I _want_ you to read it to me. I like it better when you read it to me. Won't you, please?"

He silently opened it to his favourite part, the first meeting of the lovers under the moonlight. Beside him, she, Nakajima Youko, written just _so_, sighed in contentment and leaned in.

He started to read of the stars' reflection on the water and the scent of jasmine wreathed in the lady-love's hair. With one hand he turned the pages, the other he kept curled around her name, committing it to memory of the most permanent kind.

He felt a soft touch on his arm and looked down. She was delicately writing on his bare wrist, half-absorbed in his deep voice. When she realised he had stopped, she looked up.

"What are you doing?"

Her eyes were soft. "Practising my calligraphy."

"I don't recognise those characters."

"No. They're a made-up name. Your name. Your new one, if that's all right. I've been practising for days. I think I've got them right now."

Wordless, he watched her reach over the book and write the characters again, on top of his fist. The strokes of her fingertips were kind and unusually elegant. As soon as she had finished, the name sounded in his ears and he knew it was perfect. It remained in quiet heat upon his hand, his name on one side, hers on the other.

She drew back a little, resting her head on the tree trunk next to his shoulder. "Read to me? Please?"

He uncurled his hand and laid it on the mossy ground, very near hers.

"Always," he promised her, dipping his head to hide his smile.

* * *

****

A/N - It wasn't originally supposed to be a fic about his name, just ended up that way. I think this story came about because I have a soft spot for Keiki's voice actor (Koyasu Takehito). Keiki can read to me anytime he likes :D

Thank you for your patience with me. Feedback much appreciated. :)


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